


Promises and Paperwork

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Hoth, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: A soft moment between Cassian and Jyn while they're both stationed on Hoth. She's a blanket-stealer. He's a little bad at taking time off. They'll figure things out, eventually.





	Promises and Paperwork

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassandor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/gifts).



Rebel soldiers are not only given paychecks, but also healthcare, child support, and days off. Jyn thiks, not for the first time, that this organization is a little too bureaucratic for her. But, then, as usual, she’s reminded that she’s just maybe a little fond of someone who seems to find actual joy in bureaucratic paperwork.

Like right now. Cassian is scribbling down something on his datapad, filling in something that looks suspiciously like a far-too-official form. The type of form that got her the stupid Captain’s badge he kept replacing whenever she lost it. The type of form that means more duties and more paperwork.

“You know,” Jyn drawls from where she’s sitting on the bed, idly spinning a vibroblade with one hand. “For a former anarchist recruited from the Outer Rim, you’re awfully enamored with paperwork.”

“Mm, and for a hardened criminal, you’re rather besotted with that fluffy blue… blanket-thing.”

“It’s just a blanket. Not a thing.” And it had been a prized purchase of hers on her last shopping trip with Shara Bey.

“It looks like a wampa’s hairball.”

“It’s _warm.”_

“Yes, I imagine many hairballs are too.”

“Cassian!” 

He doesn’t look up, too busy tapping out some long message that, knowing him, has as much of a chance of being encrypted maximum security information as a document cataloging every type of door found on Echo Base. 

She throws the knife. Not at him, of course, but into the thin wall behind the bed, where she’s placed a target. It’s another bullseye, which renders exactly as much non-surprise from her as the knife-throwing in general does from him. Probably because the target has at least eleven little lines where prior knives landed, and probably because he has his own target, set up on the opposite wall. Cassian’s target, however, has slightly few marks on the bullseye. Jyn considers this one small victory she has over the military genius she now lives with. Cassian still hasn’t told her he doesn’t normally throw knives with his right hand.

Jyn hasn’t told him she knows that nor that she blushed when she first realized he was doing it, despite, or even, perhaps _because of,_ her endless bragging when she wins.

Both of them are far better at throwing knives than talking about their feelings, anyway. They both privately are sure of that fact. Sure that this isn’t really a relationship, that a relationship needs things like long heartfelt chats and words like _love_ and _need_ and maybe even _sweetheart._ They oth tell themselves that as long as they can’t say those types of things, well, then they’re excused from having to worry that this thing they have might not last. That they might say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and lose the source of so much of their light. They’re both quite sure that emotions are something handled by other people who are in more complicated, more emotional, sorts of relationships.

They’re both pretty sure that this might be a relationship, though, and that terrifies them both. Even though they’re both even better at catching the subtle flickers of emotions on the other ones face than they are at catching knives, and they’re both faster to anticipate the other’s need than they are to draw a weapon in a fight. 

One might even say they’re comfortable with each other’s chaos, these days.

“Why do you like paperwork anyway?” Jyn gets up to try and steal a peak over his shoulder, only to find he’s writing the whole document in High Aurebesh, which he knows she is refusing to learn, on principle. He used to write in in Ti’vii’aiii, until she picked up that language and wrote him horribly pun-and-bad-metaphor-based poetry, which she timed to have deliver anytime he opened a non-urgent document.

It turns out that writing him an ode to his mustache that compared it to a porg’s mating dance was enough to make him slice into her carefully created coding, delete it, and then, in an absolutely cruel maneuver, go clean-shaven for three whole weeks, until she apologized. Begrudgingly. And less with words and more with kisses. 

They have yet to figure out that these things, thier humor and their physical contact, these are the building blocks that will reinforce the fragile thing between them, forged in danger and now, lived out on Echo Base, deep in the cold chill of Hoth.

“I don’t like paperwork,” he replies. “I just find it efficient and predictable.”

Those words do describe him. Right down to his habit of of folding his socks. Part of her brain can’t quite comprehend that she lives with a man who folds his socks. The rest of her brain delights in finding ways to prank that tiny ritual, including the time she hid all his standard issue socks and replaced them with iridescent, polka-dotted once, complete with a lace ruffle around the ankle. That plan had, admittedly, failed because he’d worn them, then explained, in a low, mournful voice, that Jyn had purchased them for herself but found her feet far too large for them. Cassian insisted he was only wearing the socks so that they wouldn’t go to waste. Sure enough, Skywalker ended up bringing Jyn back a pack of the same socks, a size bigger. And because even Jyn couldn’t bring herself to hurt Skywalker’s feelings, she ended up wearing the damn socks for a week.

“I find it useless.”

“I’m well aware of that. As is everyone, on all three bases we’ve been stationed on.” They’re not part of the same branch, but after Jyn simply ignored her orders and followed Cassian on his first post-Yavin deployment, the pathfinders have been a little more flexible with Jyn’s assignments. She’s on guard duty, essentially, and lucky, every base could use a few more guards. They draw the line at her ever coming on one of his missions, because they both know how much that could endanger both the mission and him. But they also both know that if it takes him too long to return to her, she’s going after him, paperwork, rules, and Rebellion be damned.

What Jyn doesn’t know is that Cassian feels the same way about her, and her patrols. 

They finally do curl up in bed, at some point after the paperwork is finished, but before dawn arrives on the ice planet. Jyn had already fallen asleep by the time Cassian slides in next to her, though she wakes when she feels the pressure of the mattress shift. Neither of them can help the fact they’re light sleepers. Both of them could do a better job sharing blankets, but they do have very different preferences as to what’s necessary for sleep on Hoth. 

Cassian is fine with his standard issue blanket, and a heavier thermal over it. He also tends to wear two pairs of socks, a shirt, trousers, and sometimes a cardigan, to bed. Jyn has tried, multiple times, to introduce the concept of pajamas to him, and it’s gone about as well as the time someone tried to introduce her to the concept of a ballgown.

Granted, if said Alliance official who’d watched in horror when she’d ripped the offered scrap of silk out of their hands saw what she considered appropriate nightwear for a rebel outpost base, they might be more baffled than ever. Because Jyn hates the concept of ballgowns, of corsets, of manners simply for manners’ sake, of smiling and curtsying and pretending some old fool of an officer is a charming companion at the dinner table, but Jyn does love pretty things. 

And that’s something everyone knows. That she treasures little treats. That the day someone brought back real Kuatian sugar-spirals, everyone around her had seen Captain Erso smile, really smile, not just the snarl that she tries to tilt in a good-natured way. Jyn, who’s had so little for so long, craves so much more than she can ever say.

She’s yet to tell Cassian the soft grey Duimanii silk robe she wears is stolen. He knows, anyway, but he won’t tell her that, because he’s too afraid that might cause him to blurt out how pretty she looks in it. How it ripples around her when she walks to bed, like someone’s made a river of starlight and spun it around her. How each of the (non-stolen) slips she wears beneath it are the most wonderful things he’s seen, because they’re bright and sweet and remind him of flowers that he once knew the name of, when he was a boy playing with toy soldiers in the mud of his family’s greenhouse. 

He has, however, told her she has the coldest feet in the galaxy. As Cassian is a problem-solver, though, he has at least attempted to fix that issue, knitting her heavy slippers in plain bantha wool yarn, which has no visual qualities to speak of, though it does offer that vital one of warmth. He’s also knitted Kay a scarf and hat, as the droid had made a comment that Cassian shouldn’t knit him socks as they might cause him to slip in the heat of battle. Cassian has plenty of plans for things to knit both of them in the future (not that he’ll tell either of them that) and absolutely no plans to ever mention his hobby (learned in physical therapy after his fall on Scarif) to the rest of their friends.

So they sleep, Cassian with his simple blanket set and Jyn with a veritable array of various warm fabrics, collected from across the galaxy. There’s more blankets on Jyn’s side of the bed than there are X-Wings currently in the hangar bay. Cassian knows, because he’s counted both sets of things.

And in the morning, Jyn pads her way down the hall to the ‘fresher unit they share with the other barrack rooms in the wing. She takes a long, warm (or as warm as Hoth-plumbing can offer) shower, thinking very little of her day ahead. It’s been ages since they’ve had much of anything to do on Hoth, beyond the occasional Wampa skirmish. At least Cassian has been able to stay for a whole three standard days in a row, which is close to a record for him.

He still can’t tell her ahead of time when he’ll leave next, and not just because of security protocols. It had far more to do with the fact she hasn’t quite figured out how to say goodbye. It’s much easier, in Jyn’s eyes, to pick a fight with that person, approximately two hours before they leave, so they storm away angry, and she doesn’t have to try to choke out words she can’t say. Words like _I love you_ or _come back safely._

Jyn does realize that Captain Solo is just as guilty of the same habit. What she doesn’t realize, though, is unlike the princess’s clueless-rising-to-the-bait action each time, Cassian’s reaction is calculated and fake, because he knows exactly what she’s not saying.

Because he can’t say those words either, because they’re just as true for him, too. 

Given the nature of his departures now, she tells herself not to be surprised, nor disappointed, when she returns to an empty bedroom, the blankets a mess on the cot, and the lights turned out. (She tends to leave them on. If the Rebellion can afford paychecks, it can afford her small vanity of not being in the dark during the day.)

So, she gathers her things and heads out for a morning patrol. It’s only as the patrol is ending, when Bodhi asks if she’s seen Cassian, that she is just a little perplexed. “He’s out,” she says. “I figured you would have known.” Given that Bodhi tends to be the one Cassian _does_ tell when he’s leaving, since the pilot handles it far better than anyone else.

“Hasn’t said a word. Actually, he promised we’d play a game of Sabaac tonight.”

Jyn raises an eyebrow.

“He promised to make food and try to keep an eye on Solo to see if he’s really cheating or just that lucky.” 

That sounds much more like Cassian. All except… “He wouldn’t make a promise if there was a mission.” Because to them, at least, to their family bound by the battles they’d fought together, he would never make such an easily broken promise.

Neither Jyn nor Bodhi realize that Cassian never made promises at all, before them.

Jyn checks the medbay, just in case, because Cassian’s most frustrating habit isn’t actually his love of paperwork, but his absolute instensice that he’s fine when asked by anyone except Kay. Mainly because Kay is capable of, and has, carried Cassian straight into the medbay. 

For once, though, he’s not there. Which is good. She frets, sometimes, over the day his spinal injury will resurface, worries that one day he’ll push himself so far that even his own wretched stubbornness won’t bring him back. But every time she worries, she reminds herself she’s just as damn stubborn as him.

She heads back to the room. Grabs her coat from where he hung it up for her yesterday, and then, with the hallway door open, shouts, “ _ANDOR?”_

Jyn thinks she’s being subtle when she calls him by his last name in public. That people won’t guess at the intimacy between them if they never hear her address him as anything more familiar than that. 

Jyn is, of course, quite wrong, but most people in the Rebellion are kind enough to let this one harmless quirk of hers slide. Moreso because they’re glad that Cassian is happy, and less so to encourage Jyn’s other quirks, of course. There’s an entire private datachannel called _Captain Erso stole something absolutely pointless from me and here’s where I found it._

They’ve yet to realize Jyn has infiltrated their group under three separate false names, just to share even more ludicrous stories of her own exploits. Some of which are actually true.

Which is fine, because Jyn has yet to realize Cassian has been posting stories on the channel too, under his own fake name. One of which is quite true, though Jyn had no idea it was Cassian she’d pickpocketed that day, given that his disguise involved a long green beard and an eyepatch. He’s still saving a copy of the stupid little red datapen she’d stolen, just to twirl it in his fingers one day and see how long it takes her to notice. 

“Andor!” she calls again.

“Mm?”

That’s his voice, his soft noncommittal mumble. “Where are you?” she demands. 

“Right here.”

“Where!” That sounded like it came from inside the room. She spins, scanning through the simple room again. Looking for him.

The pile of blankets on the bed shifts, just a bit. “Yes?” the blankets ask in a perfectly soft Festian accent. (Jyn has yet to realize she will be getting a Festian quilted blanket, one day, but given that they’re the traditional form of a proposal on that ice planet, Cassian has decided to wait until after the war ends to offer her the one he’s made) 

“Are you… were you _napping?”_

Cassian’s head peeks out of the pile. His hair is tousled and for once he looks well-rested. _No,_ Jyn thinks, _screw that. He looks krffing adorable._

“I was resting.”

“Napping.”

“Repairing a slept debt.”

“Napping.” But this time, as she says it, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed. She reaches out to run her fingers through his silky smooth hair, marveling that she can. That they’ve learned to trust each other in such intimate things, when they’d had so little trust at all to start. “Napping.” she says again.

“Want to join?” He opens the blankets, pauses, frowns for just a moment. “Boots off.”

She shakes her head, but shucks the footwear, and then, slides in next to him. When she’s pressed this close, she can hear his heartbeat, and right now, it’s the most important sound of them all. 

Jyn doesn’t realize how often Cassian lies awake, listening for her own, the rise and fall of her chest the one rhythm he knows is truly real and truly important.

But they’ll learn. Someday. And what they don’t learn, they’ll find a way to maneuver around, or repair, or adjust.Like right now, as there’s a great deal of blankets to be sorted out and cold feet to be commented on. 

Only after they’re truly comfortable, does Cassian say. “You never asked what my paperwork was for.”

“Something stupid, probably.”

He kisses her forehead. “Only if a week off is stupid.”

Her lips pressed together, trying to frown, but fighting a smile that wins out in the end. As it often does, these days, around him. “It is stupid. But,” and she darts closer to kiss him. First his nose, then his lips. First silly, and then sweet, and then, yielding to the heat between them. “It’s nice too.”

“I knew I’d find paperwork you appreciated one of these days.”

Jyn just laughs. Cassian holds her tighter in his arms, holds her, because despite all that’s not said, they both know this is exactly where they belong. Safe, and warm, and together.

**Author's Note:**

> ForestPenguin, I so appreciate you and your fics and I hope this silly little one brightens your day! Thank you so much for sharing your idea and letting me run with it.  
> Comments are welcome!


End file.
